Retro Re-release Roundup, week of May 7, 2026
I get the Fuuma's fuumin', I got Rasputins 'putin.
If any of you World Heroes Perfect players happen to run into an online Johnny Maximum player who likes to abuse the post-KO hitstop glitch ad nauseum, know that you just faced... well, not me, because I've long stopped giving SNK money, but someone who shares my particular sickness.
ARCADE ARCHIVES / ARCADE ARCHIVES 2
Arkanoid
- Platform: Nintendo Switch 2, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series S/X (worldwide, ACA2) / Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 (worldwide, ACA)
- Price: $9.99 / €8.99 / £7.39 (ACA2), $7.99 / €6.99 / £6.29 (ACA), $2.99 / €2.99 / £2.49 (ACA-to-ACA2 upgrade)
- Publisher: Hamster / Taito
What's this? Taito genre-reviving brick-breaker, originally released in arcades in 1986 and quickly adapted for Famicom/NES and every contemporary Japanese and global computer under the sun, with or without a supplementary paddle controller, with emulated reissues made available via the Egret II Mini paddle expansion kit and the recent Taito Milestones 4 compilation for Nintendo Switch; bounce the ball, break the bricks, grab the falling power-ups, you know the drill. (The Arcade Archives version allows one to use a mouse to simulate paddle controls, either via USB mouse or via the Switch 2's joycon mouse functionality.)
Why should I care? You want to see what boomers had to make do with before Ball x Pit fixed the genre by infusing it with the latest trends in gambling psychology.
Helpful tip: In case you missed the last few reissues, allow me to address the edits made to the game that have caused some controversy among Arkanoid fanatics: as a consequence of Atari's successful copyright cases concerning Breakout, Taito felt it necessary to make edits to any stage layout that featured horizontal lines of single-colored bricks, which originally appeared as early as the very first stage.
CONSOLE ARCHIVES
MagMax (Famicom)
- Platform: Nintendo Switch 2, PlayStation 5 (worldwide)
- Price: $7.99 / €6.99 / £6.29
- Publisher: Hamster / Nichibutsu
What's this? The home conversion of Nichibutsu's 1985 horizontal transforming-robot arcade shooting game MagMax, originally developed and published for Famicom by Nichibutsu in 1986 and NES by FCI in 1988; players shoot their way through each stage in the search for the various parts that will allow their ship to transform into a powerful robot, with each stage divided into above-ground, three-quarter-view stages and more conventional underground side-view stages that can be transitioned between via the holes in either stage.
Why should I care? It's canon to Hideki Kamiya's Sol Cresta, I guess? Honestly, the vast majority of the arcade game's appeal came from the line-scroll effect used on the above-ground stages, but that visual gimmick's missing from the home version, so you're left with an unremarkable version of a game whose authentic version has been available on Arcade Archive for eons.
Useless fact: MagMax was Nichibutsu's first self-produced console game.
EGG CONSOLE
Deep Dungeon: Madou Senki (MSX)
- Platform: Nintendo Switch (worldwide)
- Price: $7.19 / ¥990
- Publisher: D4 Enterprise / Hummingbird Soft
What's this? The 1988 MSX conversion of Hummingbird Soft's 3D dungeon-crawling RPG Deep Dungeon, originally developed for the Famicom Disk System and published by Square offshoot DOG in 1986; barring the obvious audiovisual differences, this MSX version sports largely different map layouts and a smattering of additional items over the FCDS original.
Why should I care? You're looking for a Wizardry-but-simpler dungeon crawler that hasn't been completely drained of all tension, as most games in this category tended to be. (As it happens, the FCDS version bore the distinction of being the Famicom's first 3D dungeon-crawler, beating Wizardry to the punch, and such was its competency that it managed to receive multiple sequels.)
Language barrier? The vast majority of text, including item and battle descriptions, is presented in hiragana/katakana — those familiar with the genre could probably intuit what most of the menu options do, I guess.
NEOGEO PREMIUM SELECTION
- Platform: PC via Steam (worldwide)
- Price: $19.99 or equivalent
- Publisher: SNK / Code Mystics
What's this? An emulated reissue of the final entry in ADK's early time-hopping, post-Street Fighter II fighting game series World Heroes, originally released in arcades, Neogeo AES and Neogeo CD in 1995 and ported to Sega Saturn in Japan in 1996, with various emulated reissues via the Wii Virtual Console, Arcade Archives and the PlayStation 2 World Heroes Anthology; this "premium" reissue offers a detailed training mode, online multiplayer with rollback netcode, matchmaking and lobbies, and art gallery and more, including the ability to select the boss characters Son Goku and Neo Dio, as well as sub-boss Zeus, a character not previously playable in the original arcade game.
Why should I care? You're someone who came across the earlier entries in their day and wrote of the series as an overly simple and wacky also-ran, without ever learning that Perfect's big crazy gimmick was "being good, actually" — I can say without hyperbole that World Heroes Perfect serves as the Neogeo's missing link between traditional fighting games and what might now be codified as "anime" fighting games, in a similar manner to Capcom's Darkstalkers series, and it's absolutely deserving of having received a "premium" reissue over all the better-known games that remain in the vault.
Useless fact: In the more hopeful, pre-MiSK days, one of SNK's leads expressed a desire to resurrect the World Heroes series, reckoning that they'd have zero pressure to live up to past entries as it's an overwhelmingly goofy series that'd allow them to do whatever they liked without anyone caring either way, and as someone who might rank Perfect as the Neogeo's best 1v1 fighting game... yeah, maybe.
OTHER
- Platform: Nintendo Switch 2 (worldwide)
- Price: $29.99 or equivalent (free upgrade from Switch version)
- Publisher: Atari / Nightdive Studios
What's this? A belated Switch 2 version of Night Dive's recent remaster-of-a-remaster, which hit PC and other consoles late last year, with Refreshed Supply being a remaster of the 2010 Blood: Fresh Supply, itself an all-in-one package containing Monolith's cult 1997 PC first-person shooter Blood and its official expansion packs. Unlike Night Dive's first stab at this game, this new version benefits from the retrieval of the original source code and offers more accurate rendering and game behavior, support for the original CD and MIDI soundtracks, controls configured for gamepad, split-screen and online co-op and deathmatch with crossplay, a vault with archival materials and much more. (The Switch 2 version adds Joycon mouse support, upto 4K/120FPS support and 6-player split-screen functionality.)
Why should I care? You're late to the party on the crowning commercial achievement of 3D Realms' Build Engine and a worthy counterpart to the likes of classic Doom and Duke Nukem 3D, whose absence on home consoles over the last few decades seemed particularly unfortunate (if not understandable, given the rights issues surrounding the publishing and ownership rights of the game).
Helpful tip: The promised additional expansion content, which was only partially available on launch, is now fully present and accounted for on all platforms: of particular note is the final, commercialized form of the popular fan mode Death Wish, which many have heralded as the best Blood content ever produced. (Whether they continue to feel that way about this final, heavily-modified version, I could not say...)
UPDATES UPDATES UPDATES
Nethack 5.0.0, out now (PC)
38 years strong, kids.
